As Conservation Careers grows, learns and evolves we have looked again at our conservation mission statement, vision and values. These are important because they communicate to everyone the key aspects of an organisation, provide focus and clarity. Together they help to make decisions, hold organisations to account and set the culture of an organisation. Important stuff.

What are the Mission, Vision and Values?

• Mission – what an organisation does?
• Vision – why an organisation exists?
• Values –  how an organisation works?

How did we identify our Conservation Mission Statement?

We began by brainstorming and sharing ‘stories’ about things were particularly proud of achieving over the past fives years. What does it look like when we’re doing our best work? Here are some examples which we explored:

• We curate the world’s biggest collection of conservation opportunities to help people seeking employment, skills or experience within the wildlife conservation sector.

• We help conservation starters, switchers and climbers to achieve career clarity, form an action plan and secure their dream job throughout online and face-to-face courses.

• We support aspiring and professional conservationists to secure their target job with our personalised application and interview support.

• We find talented staff, volunteers, students and interns for hundreds of conservation organisations around the globe.

• We share hundreds of career success stories and advice articles with a global community of budding and professional conservationists in order to help them get clear about their options and progress their careers more quickly.

From these examples, we identified the following:

Mentions of people or places

• People seeking employment, skills or experience within the wildlife conservation sector
• Conservation starters, switchers and climbers
• Talented conservationists
• Conservation employers
• A global community of budding and professional conservationists

Mentions of taking action:

• Curate the world’s biggest collection of conservation opportunities
• Online and face-to-face courses
• Find talented conservationists
• Created hundreds of career success stories and advice articles
• Refine my career vision and improve on my application skills
• Teach people how to apply for jobs and how employers make their decisions when looking at potential applicants

Mentions of outcomes:

• Achieve career clarity
• Secure their dream job
• Form a career action plan
• Get clear about their options
• Progress careers more quickly.

From these we produced the simplest, clearest, most inclusive mission statement as possible. The fewer the words, and the more memorable the better.

The Mission Statement of Conservation Careers is to help conservationists achieve career success.

Creating our vision statement was easy, because we just had to ask ourselves what kind of world we want to see in the future? This was clear to us.

The Vision of Conservation Careers is a world where wildlife thrives.

Finally, we took a long hard look at the way we work, in order to identify our values. For us, we identified the following four guiding principles:

The Core Values of Conservation Careers

• Open – We build trust through transparency and honesty; we’re open to new ideas.
• Agile – We learn and innovate quickly to achieve our goals and create impact.
• Collaborative – We work with others to reach our goals.
• Optimistic – We assume the best and are hopeful, encouraging and courageous. We’re not afraid of failure.

The Mission Statements, Visions and Values of nature conservation organisations

Finally, we looked at some of the largest conservation organisations to see what their Mission, Vision and Values are. Here’s what we found…

Organisation	Vision	Conservation Mission Statement	Values
Conservation Careers	A world where wildlife thrives.	To help conservationists achieve career success	Open, Agile, Collaborative and Optimistic.
RSPB	A world richer in nature	By 2020… Our work is both urgent and important and we need to act now to make a difference. The world’s governments have committed to halting biodiversity loss by 2020 and we will challenge them, as well as businesses, civil society and ourselves, to take the steps necessary to reach this goal, and then go further.	Bold, Focused, Supportive and Together.
WWF	A future in which people live in harmony with nature.	To conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on Earth.	Respect, Integrity and Results.
FFI	A sustainable future for the planet, where biodiversity is effectively conserved by the people who live closest to it, supported by the global community.	To conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science, and which take into account human needs.	Not found
IUCN	A just world that values and conserves nature	To influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.	Not found
The Nature Conservancy	A world where the diversity of life thrives, and people act to conserve nature for its own sake and its ability to fulfil our needs and enrich our lives.	To conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends.	Integrity, respect, diversity, One Conservancy, results.
WCS	A world where wildlife thrives in healthy lands and seas, valued by societies that embrace and benefit from the diversity and integrity of life on earth.	To save wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature.	Respect, accountability and transparency, innovation, diversity and inclusion, collaboration, and integrity.
BirdLife International	A world where nature and people live in greater harmony, more equitably and sustainably.	To conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources.	Not found
ZSL	A world where wildlife thrives*	To inspire, inform and empower people to stop wild animals going extinct	Not found

*Yes, it turns out we have the same Vision as ZSL!

Do you have feedback or questions? Drop us a line at mail@conservation-careers.com we’d love to hear from you.

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